Americans seem to have no concept of irony and satire. Clearly, the cover isn't meant to insult Obama but meant to mock his detractors. No wonder most forms of American media are so damn awful! If there were any subtlety, Americans wouldn't understand it.

They ought to study what percent of Americans readily grasp irony. It very well could be less than 50%.

Yes.

Yes, Americans really are that stupid. Almost half of the population (both Republicans and Democrats) think Obama is Muslim (raised Muslim, swore upon the Koran upon becoming part of the IL senate, etc. All of which are untrue and verifiable). I am not particularly proud of the average Americans level of education at the moment.

It's the New Yorker that's stupid, for forgetting that one of the most important elements of satire is context. Put the same drawing on a TV screen with the FOX emblem in the corner and a pair of couch potatoes parked in front of it, put THAT on your cover, and you've got satire.

That opinion makes sense, but if you study the New Yorker's history of provocative covers you'll see that it is precisely their style to leave out that caption, that explanation--that punchline, as it were. Some find it more effective that they leave it up to the viewer to complete the joke, and others, especially non- NYer readers who are not used to that style, find it annoying, effete, offensive, elitist, etc.

But notice that no one seems to want to admit that they themselves didn't get the joke. everyone assumes that everyone ELSE won't get it. Let's all just calm down about it, and assume that, as satire, regardless of its effectiveness, it is NOT hate speech; and therefore, let's just leave it alone and hope next week's cover is funnier. Or better yet, if you find it distasteful, don't read the damn mag. Right?

NO were not, We dont need a pictuer to help expose what we already know about Obama and thats fact. The guys an idiot full of false pipe dreams like Pelosi and her dawg Murtha, leagacy is his only concern lets get over the lie that Obama or any other leader for that fact gives a crap about what you or anyone else thinks for that mater. I think his wife looks rather normal in the art, kind suits Obama as well..................

Get over it people I didn't see the liberals crying when there hero Kieth Olbermann listed Tony Snow on his list but then again it's ok to to go after any republican without lashback from the world of liberal idiots at large...........

My God, and to think I was willing to give my life for those who are amongst us......What a mistake Maybe I should join Obama and hang a picture up of my "behind the doors" hero Osama, at least he gets more respect and sypathy than our own CIC............

Expectator is right on the money; New Yorker was the pinnacle of wit for many decades, but that was a long time ago. Now they are forced to pander to public misconceptions and fears. The cover was obviously a smear campagne.

Thank you, iwas1nchr, for answering the question posed by this thread.

And the reason liberals didn't get pissed about Olberman going after Tony Snow, or Bill O'Reilly, or the President is simple: He attacks their policies, he attacks their political ideologies, their expressed opinions, and in some cases, he points out when they are blatantly mistaken, lying, or flip-flopping on their opinions (something focused more on Snow and O'Reilly, and something conservatives considered fair game when it was directed at John Kerry). If Olberman had focused his attacks on, for example, lies about his family (such as Karl Rove did when he circulated rumors that Senator McCain was a traitor who had a black baby out of wedlock), most liberals would have been outraged, just as they were when, well, Karl Rove did it to Senator McCain.

This is something called common human decency, something Olberman, despite his sometimes overbearingly smug attitude, still holds on to, something that the O'Reilly's, and apparently you, lost touch with a long time ago, and its something that luckily some politicians maintain on both sides of the aisle. When Rove circulated the push polls attacking McCain's service, then Governor Bush jumped to his defense--wait sorry, he didn't, but his fellow Senators and veterans, including Democrats, did. When Max Cleland, multiple amputee war veteran and Democrat, was compared to Osama bin Laden in attack ads by his Republican opponent, McCain and other Republican veterans among those who condemned the attacks, much as they did when Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacked Kerry.

People who read the New Yorker understand the tradition of satire without context--much like regular viewers of South Park know exactly what not to take seriously on that show. But the driving message of the McCain campaign has been this: "Elitist Americans, like the sort that reads the New Yorker, don't matter. Regular American's do." And the Obama campaign is basically quietly mumbling: "Yeah, McCain's probably right, all about the ordinary Americans." In that context, the cover, while well intentioned, was a poor decision. American's aren't stupid (with some notable exceptions), but for the most part they're harried, too busy to judge a book by more than its cover, too distracted to form more than a first impression of the deluge of media thrown at them, and often too misinformed to always be on the same page as our self-styled cultural and political leaders.